Quotes & Sayings About Fear And Obedience

But there were other forces at work in the cub, the greatest of which was growth. Instinct and law demanded of him obedience. But growth demanded disobedience ... In the end, one day, fear and obedience were swept away by the rush of life, and the cub straddled and sprawled toward the entrance. — Jack London

The whip degrades; a severe father teaches his children to dissemble; their love is pretense, and their obedience a species of self-defense. Fear is the father of lies. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Humility is the mother of many virtues because from it obedience, fear, reverence, patience, modesty, meekness and peace are born. He who is humble easily obeys everyone, fears to offend anyone, is at peace with everyone, is kind with all. — Thomas Of Villanova

The work of obedience is difficult and of the highest importance; so that if anyone can be negligent therein because God will help and assist him, it is because he hates it, he likes it not. Let others do what they please, I shall endeavour to comply with the apostle's advice upon the enforcement which he gives unto it: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his own good pleasure." These — John Owen

So it has reached this pass? Obedience and fear take flight together? — Friedrich Schiller

Love withers under constraints. Its very essence is liberty; it is comparable neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear; it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited where its votaries are in confidence, equality and unreserve. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The capitalist empires, with their affirmations of sacrifice for the free world, of defence of private enterprise, of safeguarding order from subversion and chaos, are in fact defending their political prestige and the economic interests arising from it; they are indeed at the service of economic power and the international trusts. The socialist empires for their part are hard and intransigent, they do not allow pluralism, they impose dialectical materialism, demand blind obedience to the party, set up a regime of total and permanent insecurity and fear, just like the fascist dictatorships of the extreme right. — Helder Camara

Our good works are not truly good unless they're motivated by a love for God and a desire to glorify Him. But we cannot have such a Godward motivation if we think we must earn God's favor by our obedience or if we fear we may forfeit His favor by disobedience. Such a works-oriented motivation is essentially self-serving, prompted more by what we think we gain or lose than by a grateful response to the grace He has already given us through Jesus Christ. — Jerry Bridges

By endeavoring to bring up our children in the fear of the Lord, we shall provide for God's glory when we are dead. A godly man should not only honor God while he lives - but do something that may promote God's glory when he is dead. If our children are seasoned with gracious principles, they will stand up in our place when we have gone, and will glorify God in their generation. A good piece of ground bears not only a fore-crop but an after-crop. He who is godly does not only bear God a good crop of obedience himself while he lives - but by training his child in the principles of piety, he bears God an after-crop when he is dead. — Thomas Watson

Modern schools and universities push students into habits of depersonalized learning, alienation from nature and sexuality, obedience to hierarchy, fear of authority, self-objectification, and chilling competitiveness. These character traits are the essence of the twisted personality-type of modern industrialism. They are precisely the character traits needed to maintain a social system that is utterly out of touch with nature, sexuality and real human needs. — Arthur Evans

My biggest fear, even now, is that I will hear Jesus' words and walk away, content to settle for less than radical obedience to Him. — David Platt

In obedience there is always fear, and fear darkens the mind. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The start of sin and destruction, discouragement and darkness, always happened with single thought. He couldn't stop that. Wrong thoughts were like the billboard signs on the highway of life. They were bound to come. Victory or defeat depended on how he handled the thought. "Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ." The scripture from 2 Corinthians 10:5 came back to him now, the way it had countless other times. He grabbed the wayward thought and pushed it from his heart and mind. He wouldn't be afraid. Whatever happened ... God was in control. He had nothing to fear. The Lord had worked a miracle to this point. He wasn't finished yet. — Karen Kingsbury

The church doctrines of obedience to authority, repentance, fear of punishment, self-abnegation, acceptance of outer direction rather than inner assurance, elevation of faith over reason, and intolerance make institutionalized religion an ideal instrument of social constraint. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Jesus enters the garden, in preparation, intending to face his fears by facing his God, his Father, His greatest fear is to offend his Father, to disobey his own calling, its integrity, and the word of God on his life. — Megan McKenna

O'Brien: How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?
Winston: By making him suffer.
O'Brien: Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. — George Orwell

This is what it means to be an adventurer in our day: to give up creature comforts of the mind, to realize the possibilities of imagination. Because everything around us says no you cannot do this, you cannot live without that, nothing is useful unless it's in service to money, to gain, to stability. The adventurer gives in to tides of chaos, trusts the world to support her - and in doing so turns her back on the fear and obedience she has been taught. She rejects the indoctrination of impossibility. — Hib Chickena

Welcome Beauty, banish fear, You are queen and mistress here. Speak your wishes, speak your will, Swift obedience meets them still. — Ludwig Bechstein

Obedience and humility require courage and strength of character. Weakness and fear cause one to fall back on his or her pride, which results in a vicious cycle — Sienna McQuillen

Personal and relative duties must be done in obedience to his commands, with due aim at pleasing and honouring him, from principles of holy love and fear of him. But there is an express and direct duty also that we owe to God, namely, belief and acknowledgement of his being and perfections, paying him internal and external worship and homage - loving, fearing, and trusting in Him - depending on Him, and devoting ourselves to Him - observing all those religious duties and ordinances that He has appointed - praying to Him, praising Him, and meditating on His word and works. — Matthew Henry

True adulthood would mean no longer denying the truth. It would mean feeling the repressed suffering, consciously acknowledging the story remembered by the body at an emotional level, and integrating that story instead of repressing it. Whether contact with the parents can then in fact be maintained will depend on the given circumstances in each individual case. What is absolutely imperative is the termination of the harmful attachment to the internalized parents of childhood, an attachment that, though we call it love, certainly does not deserve the name. It is made up of different ingredients, such as gratitude, compassion, expectations, denial, illusions, obedience, fear, and the anticipation of punishment. Time — Alice Miller

The Koran calls for belief and consequent obedience. It is, surely, calculated to inspire fear, indeed abject terror, rather than love. — Antony Flew

Both fear and love might cause obedience, but only love causes joy. — Jefferson Bethke

Take from my palms, to soothe your heart,
a little honey, a little sun,
in obedience to Persephone's bees.
You can't untie a boat that was never moored,
nor hear a shadow in its furs,
nor move through thick life without fear.
For us, all that's left is kisses
tattered as the little bees
that die when they leave the hive.
Deep in the transparent night they're still humming,
at home in the dark wood on the mountain,
in the mint and lungwort and the past.
But lay to your heart my rough gift,
this unlovely dry necklace of dead bees
that once made a sun out of honey. — Osip Mandelstam

When a man fighteth against his sin only with arguments from the issue or the punishment due unto it, this is a sign that sin hath taken great possession of the will, and that in the heart there is a superfluity of naughtiness. Such a man as opposes nothing to the seduction of sin and lust in his heart but fear of shame among men or hell from God, is sufficiently resolved to do the sin if there were no punishment attending it; which, what it differs from living in the practice of sin, I know not. Those who are Christ's, and are acted in their obedience upon gospel principles, have the death of Christ, the love of God, the detestable nature of sin, the preciousness of communion with God, a deep-grounded abhorrency of sin as sin, to oppose to any seduction of sin, to all the workings, strivings, fightings of lust in their hearts. So did Joseph. "How shall I do this great evil," saith he, "and sin against the Lord ?" my good and gracious God. — John Owen

The reward of renunciation is some good greater than the thing renounced. To renounce with no vision of such a good, from fear or in automatic obedience to a formula, is to weaken the springs of life, and to diminish the soul's resistance to this world. — Hugh Kingsmill

Ultimately we have nothing to fear. Jesus loves us, and he invites us to be confident in that love. As we seek to obey Him, we are not called to assess the risk involved and determine whether or not obedience will be beneficial or safe for us. We are simply called to trust and obey. — Dan Baumann

The governments of the great States have two instruments for keeping the people dependent, in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army; and a more refined, the school. — Friedrich Nietzsche

What does it mean to fear the Lord? It means to have awe and reverence for him. The woman who fears the Lord obeys from a heart of love for the God of the universe, who is also her heavenly Father! Her childlike fear of her heavenly Father leads her to faithful and faith-filled obedience. — Kimberly Hahn

Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated upon the bleak, dark night. — Charles Dickens

In order to the attaining of all useful knowledge this is most necessary, that we fear God; we are not qualified to profit by the instructions that are given us unless our minds be possessed with a holy reverence of God, and every thought within us be brought into obedience to Him ... As all our knowledge must take rise from the fear of God, so it must tend to it as its perfection and centre. Those know enough who know how to fear God, who are careful in every thing to please Him and fearful of offending Him in any thing; this is the Alpha and Omega of knowledge. — Matthew Henry

Frankl discovered that doors are not just physical. A door is a choice. He found that when his circumstances had closed every outer door to him, they revealed to him the doors that matter far more - the doors through which a soul can leave fear and enter into courage, leave hatred and enter into forgiveness, leave ignorance and enter into learning. He discovered that his guards were actually far more imprisoned - by cruelty and ignorance and foolish obedience to barbarism - than he was imprisoned by walls and barbed wire. — John Ortberg

The Jews understand that the blessing of wealth was dependant upon obedience to the law and covenant. The laws in the Torah, if followed, would bring blessings.5 The Tanakh says, "How joyful are those who fear the Lord and delight in obeying his commands ... they themselves will be wealthy." (NLT, Psalm 112:1, 3) "If they listen and obey God, they will be blessed with prosperity throughout their lives." (NLT, Job 36:11) — H.W. Charles

But, and here comes the rub, all of us feel that we are in complete control of our desire for things. We would never admit to an ungovernable spirit of covetousness. The problem is that we, like the alcoholic, are unable to recognize the disease once we have been engulfed by it. Only by the help of others are we able to detect the inner spirit that places wealth about God. And we must come to fear the idolatrous state of covetousness because the moment things have priority, radical obedience becomes impossible. — Richard J. Foster

I do understand what love is, and that is one of the reasons I can never again be a Christian. Love is not self denial. Love is not blood and suffering. Love is not murdering your son to appease your own vanity. Love is not hatred or wrath, consigning billions of people to eternal torture because they have offended your ego or disobeyed your rules. Love is not obedience, conformity, or submission. It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being. — Dan Barker

Belief compelled through fear is not belief, it is blind and forced obedience. — Carlton D. Pearson

Like many other unfortunate young people, Harvey had never in all his life received a direct order - never, at least, without long, and sometimes tearful, explanations of the advantages of obedience and the reasons for the request. Mrs. Cheyne lived in fear of breaking his spirit, which, perhaps, was the reason that she herself walked on the edge of nervous prostration. — Rudyard Kipling

There was a time when people valued honor and loyalty - when serving a ruler wasn't about obedience and fear. — Sarah J. Maas

As one might expect, authoritarianism will at times cause children and students to adopt rebellious positions, defiant of any limit, discipline, or authority. But it will also lead to apathy, excessive obedience, uncritical conformity, lack of resistance against authoritarian discourse, self-abnegation, and fear of freedom. — Paulo Freire

At first, even if I obeyed instantly, I was still disciplined. I didn't understand and tried to react quicker, trying to anticipate what they wanted before I was disciplined again. I didn't realize it until later that I was being systematically broken and instilled with fear. I was being conditioned to serve with innately prompt obedience, without hesitation or question. I was learning what it was to be a mindless slave. — Johnny Stone

Governments are especially adept at using propaganda to induce fear among citizens to control their behavior. When people are frightened enough, they turn to governments for protection. Because we all fear the judgement of others to some degree, governments also use propaganda to manipulate our perception of the expectations of others. If propaganda creates the impression that all the other citizens expect us to be obedient, our default position will be obedience, and that can only be overcome with careful, rational analysis. Any time someone trying to control us can fill our heads with emotions, they can keep us from thinking clearly and lead us to believe in whatever bad ideas advance their agenda. — Adam Kokesh

Peace may be denied for a season. ... But God our Eternal Father will watch over this nation and all of the civilized world who look to Him. ... Our safety lies in repentance. Our strength comes from obedience to the commandments of God.
Are these perilous times? They are. But there is no need to fear. We can have peace in our hearts and peace in our homes. We can be an influence for good in this world, every one of us — Gordon B. Hinckley

The cramping influence of a hard formalist on a young child in repressing his spirits and courage, paralyzing the understanding, and that without producing indignation, but only fear and obedience, and even much sympathy with his tyranny, - is a familiar fact explained to the child when he becomes a man, only by seeing that the oppressor of his youth is himself a child tyrannized over by those names and words and forma, of whose influence he was merely the organ to the youth. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men who demand submission and obedience through fear and force do not represent the kingdom of God. They are rather representatives of the kingdom of darkness. Marriages led by men who use force and fear do not thrive and flourish as they should. Instead, these marriages become places of bondage and oppression, and they are reminiscent of hell, the dwelling place of devil. — Khuliso Mamathoni

[Theology] may be defined, the doctrine or science of the truth which is according to godliness, and which God has revealed to man that he may know God and divine things, may believe on Him and may through faith perform to Him the acts of love, fear, honour, worship and obedience, and obtain blessedness from Him through union with Him, to the divine glory ... On this account, theology is not a theoretical science or doctrine, but a practical one, requiring the action of the whole man, according to all and each of it's parts
an action of the most transcendent description, answerable to the excellence of the object as far as the human capacity will permit. — James Arminius

All those people who rejected me gave me a head-start on freedom, because the fear and obedience we are all taught, well, those things weren't getting me any love. — Ariel Gore

This important theme of Abraham's deep trust in God's promise and faithfulness helped shape Israel's own self-understanding and identity. So it's not surprising to hear Moses's words to Israel at Sinai: "Do not be afraid; for God has come in order to test [the Hebrew verb is nasah] you, and in order that the fear [yir'ah] of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin" (Exod. 20:20). These two key verbs link back to Genesis 22. Abraham was tested by God (Gen. 22:1) and through this ordeal demonstrated his fear of God (v. 12). Abraham's obedience is intended to serve as a model for Israel and to inspire Israel's obedience and solidify their relationship with ("fear of") God.5 — Paul Copan

Man was born free, but...he is in chains. Chains made of duty, hunger, fear. Chains hammered to our necks by a race that we lifted up. A race that we empowered. Not to rule, not to reign, but to lead us from a world torn by war and greed. Instead, they have led us into darkness. They expect your obedience, ignore your sacrifice, and hoard the prosperity that your hands create. To hold tight to their reign, they forbid our dreams. — Pierce Brown

If this superstitious fear of Spirits were taken away, and with it, Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted then they are for civill Obedience. — Thomas Hobbes

Mixing obedience to law as a way to merit God's favor is the exact opposite of salvation by God's free grace through faith in Jesus Christ. I myself grew up in a church that preached 80 percent law and 20 percent Jesus. The leaders believed there needed to be some law added to their message; otherwise, how would they frighten people into obedience and submission? But this legal foundation brings only condemnation and fear, because should you die unexpectedly, who knows if you had obeyed perfectly enough to go to heaven? — Jim Cymbala

One thing you can be assured of is that God has already worked out all the details of what your obedience will accomplish - and its all good. we need not fear what our obedience will cause to happen in our life. we should only fear what our disobedience will cause us to miss. the sooner this truth resonates in your heart, the quicker you can make peace with a command from God that you dont fully understand. — Lysa TerKeurst

Thus it was that in obedience to the law laid down by his mother, and in obedience to the law of that unknown and nameless thing, fear, he kept away from the mouth of the cave. — Jack London

Culture, far from giving us freedom, only develops, as it advances, new necessities; the fetters of the physical close more tightly around us, so that the fear of loss quenches even the ardent impulse toward improvement, and the maxims of passive obedience are held to be the highest wisdom of life. — Friedrich Schiller

for Isaac was neither afraid nor terrified, but of his own accord obeyed his father and God. For not terror but spontaneous obedience and fortitude should be attributed to the saints. For fear signifies that sin is ruling, and sin was not ruling in Isaac, but an obedient spirit. Although the flesh fought back, nevertheless the spirit, which subjected the flesh to itself, conquered and gained dominion. But — Martin Luther

God, I was a mess when it came to Derrek. One part relief that I wasn't still with him. One part embarrassment that I'd become a victim, that I'd let myself get sucked into an abusive relationship to begin with. One part hate - pure, raw, violent hate. And one part fear. Fear that he would find me again. Fear that he would suck me back in, remind me that I was nothing without him, that I would never be anything without him. Fear that he wouldn't give me the choice. That he would demand my obedience. And I would give it to him. Again. — Rachel Higginson

Under any religion, the preestablished impersonal code transcends the right of the individual to explore, experience, and marvel at the mysteries of his own life and death. Religions introduce us not to God but to slavery. They deprive us of our freedom to explore our own souls and to discover the endless and wondrous possibilities presented to us by an infinite universe. And most often the method of religions is fear, not love. They demand blind obedience and often obedience to dreadful dogma. — Gerry Spence

The becoming attitude for us to take is that of godly fear, implicit obedience, and unreserved resignation and submission. But not only so: the recognition of the sovereignty of God, and the realization that the Sovereign Himself is my Father, ought to overwhelm the heart and cause me to bow before Him in adoring worship. At all times I must say Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in Thy sight. — Arthur W. Pink